Major incidents declared in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire this week due to severe flooding 

Over 300 flood warnings are still in place after a stretch of bad weather hit the UK in January, with Lincolnshire and Leicestershire declaring major incidents in their counties.  

Heavy rainfall and rapid snowmelt triggered a severe flood warning for part of the River Soar near Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire where dozens of people at caravan parks were rescued by firefighters with teams deploying boats to help those surrounded by floodwater.  

Leicestershire Fire and Rescue was the first emergency service in England to declare a major incident, saying it had responded to more than 300 calls and attended 56 incidents since Monday morning (6th January) over widespread flooding.  

Troy Stevens, Chief Executive at Rhino Trade Insurance, shared with Sky News UK Tonight programme that his office in Leicestershire had been severely flooded on Monday. "Nothing could prepare me for what we saw", he said. 

Laptops had been destroyed and the office was impacted, leaving some of his staff unable to work. 

"It's not what I expected to come back to after Christmas break on a Monday morning," adding his firm, which insures tradespeople, will now be relying on those same tradespeople to get them up and running again. 

Parts of the county in and around Thurmaston were hit by another flood a year ago, which Mr Stevens said should have helped authorities to mitigate damage this time around. 

"It's easy to play the blame game, however, you'd like to think that if this was to have happened the year before, which it did do, there would be some form of investigation with a look for prevention," he said.